Is RAR really proprietary? I'm somewhat skeptical the format itself is copyrightable and any patents should've expired by now
they forbid reverse engineering in their EULA but it's allowed for interoperability, I don't think they can overrule that
@eloy "Proprietary" is generally a descriptor that applies to the restrictions stated by the maintainer/owner/etc.,, so yes, it's proprietary.
Even if it may be legally defensible to derive from it, they still *claim* that it's not, and that's what makes it proprietary. And that is not just pedantry, because it also means a chilling effect on people actually doing so.
(Interoperability is just one part of an open format; the ability to take it and improve upon it is another, for example, and that is not permitted according to RAR's terms)
@joepie91 just checked on my laptop; that is the case, so it makes sense
Just came across this one: https://salsa.debian.org/gnustep-team/unar
@joepie91 Makes sense. My wonder was mostly if you can legally derive from it.
Then things like this are unnecessarily labeled as non-free
https://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/7zip-rar
(assuming it's not copy-pasted from the RARLabs implementation but I can't open a tar.xz on my phone right now)